The MirOS BSD project has released MirOS BSD xi. "The MirOS Project proudly presents release 10 of MirOS BSD: MirOS xi. A mini-ISO for the installation can be downloaded from mirbsd.org. This image can be burned to a CD and used for installing over the network. The full CD image can be downloaded via BitTorrent. MirOS BSD is a secure operating system, originally based on OpenBSD, for i386 and sparc machines. Read more about it at the 'About MirOS' page.

Since I have started Opera anyway, I think I can
reply to you all now. But please do not expect any
further reply from me here, as this forum is inap-
propriate – it doesn’t let me respond with Lynx,
and I do not want to be forced to use a GUI browser.

> From Wikipedia:

I did not write the Wikipedia entry, nor did I ever
see it, as the licence of Wikipedia is unfree enough
to forbid me looking at it (the anti-DRM clause hits,
as the browser stores a local copy, and I have encryp-
ted filesystems).

> One of the projects goals is to port the MirOS to
> run on the Linux kernel

We could do that, in theory, but it’s not a project
goal. Actually, we just don’t have the manpower to
maintain it. (And I don’t want to go to the pain to
do the initial porting effort rigt now – there are
a lot more important things to do.)

I suggest you use official documents instead of un-
reliable non-freely-licenced third party documenta-
tion.

@swishy: the MirPorts Framework being portable has
not much to do with the MirOS base system running
on several platforms (although it could be seen as
a first step). We do whatever we deem interesting
and/or useful and can do with our limited time, as
we (developers) have a real life to live.

@fithisux: MirOS and MidnightBSD do coöperate. We
do not waste time, and we have different project
goals and a different code base, but some things
we do together (e.g. we do PR for the other project
where we can, and MidnightBSD has replaced pdksh/oksh
by mksh, and MirPorts work on MidnightBSD, and we sit
in each other’s IRC channels and help each other).
But there won’t be too much code sharing, since mnbsd
used fbsd as their base, which is so totally unlike
any traditional BSD.

@Konjofsky: thanks.
It’s quite an effort to ensure this for all the
applications, but this from /etc/profile:
export XDG_CACHE_HOME=$HOME/.etc/xdg/cache
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/.etc/xdg/config
export XDG_DATA_HOME=$HOME/.etc/xdg/data
… helps, and we patched some of the software via
MirPorts. Not all, though, mind you. Diffs welcome.

@Oliver: „the“ desktop does not exist. MirBSD, for
example, has a much more up-to-date GNOME than OpenBSD,
even if end-user desktops are not one of our primary
target groups. Things are not exclusive. While I’d
like to get more of the embedded market, we remain a
general-purpose multi-platform operating system.

@irbis: the BSD kernel isn’t going to be dropped. The
Linux kernel would only be supported since a friend of
mine wanted to play 3D FPS games…

There _is_ a kernel I’d like to actually support as an
alternative to the BSD kernel. The problem is that it’s
not yet written.
The BSD kernel was not designed with multiprocessing in
mind, so I refuse to do hacks like OpenBSD to add SMP
to it in a biglock style (which even slows things down).
For proper MP (asymmetric, too) support, almost all of
the non-driver-code in the kernel (and some driver
parts) would have to be rewritten – while keeping the
BSD spirit and the APIs (BSD, but also compat_*(8)).
Since it does not exist, and no MirOS developer has
enough spare time, will and capabilities to support
that, this will be left to academics.

----

If you have any further questions, please use the
appropriate places to ask – the IRC channel or mailing
list.